S.A. anchorwoman with cancer to share story on air

A San Antonio anchorwoman has been battling breast cancer for the past few months and will tell her story on the air Thursday night.

Karen Martinez, 9 p.m. co-anchor on Fox affiliate KABB, hopes she can turn a negative into a positive and help other women cope with the disease.

However, unlike Leslie Mouton — who co-anchored KSAT’s news bald when she spoke to viewers of her disease back in 2001 — Martinez said she won’t be taking off her wig on TV. “Leslie’s a true inspiration. But I’m not that brave,”

Her co-workers would beg to differ, saying she’s one of the most courageous people they know. Martinez was diagnosed with stage four breast cancer one day after her 34th birthday in July. She has been undergoing chemotherapy since the end of August and expects her future will include surgery and radiation.

Through her resulting nausea and hair loss — she now wears a wig — Martinez has persevered, choosing to keep hard at work in her TV news job as diligently as she can.

The married mother of three feels fortunate that she hasn’t felt too ill to stop working, but she talks of the difficulty of being on television while going through this hard time and undergoing medical treatments.

“It’s one thing to go through the treatments and lose your hair, but to do it in front of thousands of people, that’s another thing altogether,” Martinez told me in a phone chat today.

The 11-year KABB vet said not a night goes by after a newscast (she anchors Thursday through Sunday) without her getting an e-mail or two from a viewer asking why she’s been missing on the news or if she’s changed her hairstyle.

Martinez said she tried to match her wig to the length and style of her real hair, but it still looks different. “When I write them back, however, everyone’s been so supportive,” she said.

Her KABB bosses and co-workers also have been there for her, she said, and she couldn’t be more thankful.

Praising her oncologist Dr. Amy Lang for helping her stave off many potential side effects of the treatments, Martinez hopes to help others by presenting a series of stories on breast cancer, starting Thursday night.

Let’s plan to watch and offer our empathy and encouragement to this gutsy young newswoman who is determined not to let this disease get the better of her.